The Person I Needed
by hmweasley
Summary: Katniss struggles to be happy for Annie and Finnick in District 4 for reasons that make her uncomfortable to think about. When she learns of Annie's death, she has to confront that discomfort in ways that she never imagined.


**A/N: This was written for Sammy (HP Slash Luv) as part of the Gift-Giving Extravaganza 2020. I used the prompts single parent AU, jealousy, and myriad. I'm sure this isn't what you were thinking when you thought of single parent AU (and I'm not entirely sure how I got here myself), and I also hope you're not put off by the Finnick/Annie in the beginning of the fic. I hope you like it!**

**Warnings: references to past violent events in canon, mental health issues, and character death by suicide.**

**Word count: 3,080**

* * *

Katniss had no idea why she'd come.

When she'd first received Finnick and Annie's invitation to visit them in District 4, she'd been hesitant. Their child had only been born several months earlier, and Katniss had never been fond of children, let alone babies. Staying in another person's home was already more than she wanted to handle. Figuring out how to interact with an infant just made it worse.

Yet the couple, especially Finnick, had been insistent that she meet Dominic as soon as possible, and she had found herself incapable of saying no.

She hadn't actually visited Finnick or Anne since she'd boarded the train from the Capitol after being pardoned for Coin's murder, and though she would have struggled to admit it out loud, she missed them, especially Finnick who had become such a rock for her during the rebellion. They'd been through so much together, and Finnick has come close to death during their siege of the Capitol. Katniss couldn't quite shake the need to check that he was all right after everything.

But once she was in District 4, she found it even more difficult than she had imagined.

Dominic was a baby; she couldn't fault him for crying or staring at her with such trusting, innocent eyes that she was unnerved. She would never go so far as to blame him for her discomfort, but that didn't change how unsettling being around him made her feel.

She'd expected most of it. Babies had always been strange beings to her, and she'd never known what to do with them.

What she hadn't expected was Dominic's green eyes, exactly like Finnick's, with Annie's signature red hair. Well, that wasn't entirely true. She'd been told what the baby looked like, but she hadn't expected how it would make her feel.

The way Finnick and Annie doted on the baby and each other made acid burn at the back of her throat for reasons she didn't understand.

It was hard, harder than she had ever expected, to see the two of them being a picture perfect family.

Katniss has never been able to believe the world was fair, so she didn't know why the knowledge that other past victors could achieve something like this would sting as much as it did.

She had no one in District 12 except a perpetually drunk Haymitch. It didn't really matter if he cared about her or not. He was a shell of a person at the best of times, often drunk to the point of being incoherent.

Her sister had exploded into pieces. Peeta hadn't been able to love with what the Capitol had made him do. Gale had escaped to District 2, and even her own mother hadn't found the strength to stay with her Katniss hadn't gone to see her since arriving in District 4, and she had no intentions to do so.

When she was at home in her too large house in Victors Village, she hardly spoke to anyone most days. She'd been fine with that until arriving in District 4, but being around Finnick and Annie, seeing them together, stirred up a jealousy in her that she hadn't known she possessed.

As her trip wore on, it became more and more difficult for her to hide it. She found herself taking solitary walks on the beach, the sounds of the water more comforting than she expected with her only previous experience with waves being in an arena where they'd been a weapon

It didn't surprise her when Finnick caught up to her during one of her walks. His lips were set in an easy smile as he approached. Katniss paused, staring out at the horizon as she waited for him to to reach her.

"It's a little chilly, isn't it?" he asked, rubbing at his arms.

Katniss raised an eyebrow.

"It's at least ten degrees colder in Twelve right now," she pointed out with a shrug.

He laughed as he followed her farther down the stretch of beach.

Finnick and Annie still lived in District 4's former Victors' Village just as Katniss did in Twelve's. With all of the other houses empty, the beach the village sat upon had essentially become a private one. No other people were in sight as they walked.

Katniss kept her eyes on the water, watching it ebb and flow as if it were breathing. Each time it surged around her feet, she tensed, part of her sure that this time it would sweep her out to sea where she would never be found. Sometimes, when it came, she thought that might be preferable.

"You and Annie seem very happy," Katniss said after more than ten minutes of silence.

Despite the week she'd already spent with them,l and the countless hours she'd been thinking it, she had yet to actually say it to them.

Finnick gave a short laugh that Katniss wasn't expecting. He reached down to pick up a conical seashell, running his thumb over its smooth surface as they continued walking.

"Yeah," he agreed, "the past couple weeks have been good ones."

It took several seconds for Katniss to digest the full weight of Finnick's words—not all of their weeks were good ones. She glanced at him out of the corner of her eye, but he was facing the water despite his mind being somewhere else entirely

"Have things been bad?" Katniss asked, her voice raspy.

Finnick turned to look at her slowly, raising an eyebrow as if he couldn't believe she needed to ask that question. He snorted at the thought that things might not be bad.

"Things have been hard since Annie and I were in the games, Katniss. Did you expect it had all gone away the second the war was over? Is that how it worked for you?"

Katniss bristled at the tone of his voice, but she got his point. They'd appeared so happy that she'd begun to assume that it had, in fact, worked that way for them. The fact that there could be darkness still lurking beneath it all hadn't occurred to her when her own darkness was still so close to the surface.

She sighed.

"It's just with the baby…"

She trailed off, knowing any defence of herself at that point was pointless.

Finnick gave a short, disbelieving laugh.

"I love Dominic with all of my being," Finnick said, the impact of his words backing up the claim. "But I think his birth made things harder, not easier. It was difficult to sleep before, but now we're always sleep deprived, and that seems to make everything more potent. Annie's hallucinations have gotten worse. My nightmares now feature my son getting killed as often as they do myself. And on top of it all, I feel this pressure to not let it get to me because I know someone has to make sure he's taken care of."

They'd stopped walking without Katniss realizing. She stood at Finnick's side as he stared out over the water. The muscles in his shoulders were tight. Katniss could see them through his t-shirt. She focused on them, glad that his face was obscured where she was standing. She didn't think she could stomach the expression on his face in that moment.

"I'm sorry," she said quietly, knowing full well that the words meant nothing.

Plenty of people had said the same to her, and she'd laughed at them. Finnick only shook his head slightly.

"Maybe we should head back," he said, his gaze on his feet. "I should check on Annie and the baby."

Now that she knew the kind of anxiety behind needing to check after them, her stomach tightened at the words. She nodded, her jaw clenching as she followed him back down the beach.

When she looked at Dominic next, his small trusting face had a different sort of impact. One she wasn't prepared for.

She was more than happy once it was time for her to leave.

* * *

Katniss blinked blankly at her phone as it rang.

No one ever called her except her mother or Doctor Aurelius. But those were always had schedule times: her mother at five o'clock on Fridays and Doctor Aurelius at one o'clock on Mondays. Other than that, her phone sat unused.

Finnick had called her somewhat regularly once upon a time, but that had stopped after Dominic was born and began taking up all of his time.

Katniss took a few steps, staring down at the phone as if that would make it spill its secrets. She frowned at the number on the caller ID. It was Finnick and Annie's number, but even when Finnick had called her, it had been in the evenings. She knew he wasn't a morning person, and even Katniss, an early riser, hadn't had time to fix herself breakfast since waking up.

She picked up the phone with trepidation, only to be immediately hit with the screeching of a baby on the other side of the line. She cringed and held the phone away from her ear.

"Hello," she said, her voice cracking from disuse in a pointed reminder that she'd been asleep not even half an hour earlier.

"Katniss," Finnick said, his own voice cracking for an entirely different reason.

Katniss' hand tightened around the phone and she pressed it hard against her ear, no longer bothered by Dominic's cries.

"Finnick?" she asked. "What's going on?"

His sobs were his only answer. Katniss backed towards her stairs without looking where she was going and nearly tripped over them before she could lower herself down to sit. Part of her wanted to drop the phone and run to avoid dealing with whatever had happened in District 4, but Doctor Aurelius had told her countless times that avoidance wasn't a good solution. So, taking a deep breath, she tried to get Finnick to answer again.

"Finnick, is something wrong?"

There was another pause before Finnick sucked in a sharp breath.

"Annie's dead."

Katniss' blood turned cold.

They'd been doing wonderfully just several months ago. Sure, Finnick had said that things were difficult, but Katniss had been sure that they were at least better off than Haymitch, who had taken to drinking so much that he was usually unconscious when Katniss visited. How could Annie be dead?

"What happened?" she repeated.

Finnick didn't want to answer that question.

"I don't know what to do, Katniss. She's gone. They took her body away this morning, and now it's just me and Dominic. He keeps crying, and nothing I do makes it stop. He wants his mom, and that's the one thing I can't give him anymore. I don't know what to do. I can't do this, Katniss. I can't."

His sobs grew until he could no longer speak. Katniss felt her cheeks burn despite the distance between them. She didn't know how to handle this. When her father had died, her mother had closed herself off, becoming a shell of a person instead of crying like this. And Katniss had withdrawn too.

"I'm sorry," she said for lack of a better response. "I don't know what to do."

Finnick didn't respond at first. The phone line was silent except for Dominic's and Finnick's sobs. Katniss didn't say a word but her heart raced in her chest with shame that she couldn't be a better help.

Finnick's crying gradually slowed, though Katniss still heard the tears in his voice when he spoke.

"You don't have to do anything," he said. "Just… Can we sit here for a little bit?"

Katniss' stomach tightened with anxiety, but she couldn't say no. Not to Finnick, who had been there through so much with her.

"Sure," she agreed, wrapping her arm that wasn't holding the phone around her knees.

It would take weeks before she worked up the courage to ask Finnick why he'd called her in the aftermath instead of his doctor. His response would do nothing to make things clearer.

"I don't know," he would say. "You just felt like the person I needed to call."

* * *

There were a myriad of reasons why going back to District 4 was a bad idea. Annie had already been cremated, her ashes scattered into the sea like she'd wished.

Katniss couldn't mourn her friend in District 4 any better than she could in District 12, and she knew she was more likely to be a nuisance than a help to Finnick. She didn't know how to help someone who was grieving. She felt like perhaps she should after the amount of death she'd witness, but in something like this, she was even more lost than she'd been during the war.

It was one thing to see someone murdered. It was one thing to see them die in war. It was something else entirely to know they'd taken their own life and left behind their family when they'd finally had the chance to start living free from the oppression that had haunted them for years.

Katniss didn't blame Annie, not in the slightest. In the darkest parts of her soul, the ones she tried running from as often as she could, she understood too well why Annie had done it. That didn't make facing Finnick any easier. It actually made it much harder.

But he sounded so lost when Katniss talked to him on the phone, and he had no one left in District 4 except a baby who couldn't comprehend the fact that its mother was gone forever. So, though Katniss couldn't say that she wanted to go, she knew that she had to.

District 4 looked the same as it had the last time when she arrived. The air was more humid than it had been last time. The moisture pressed into Katniss and made her shirt stick to her skin the second she stepped off the train. It made it difficult to breathe as she lugged her suitcase across town. She didn't understand how anyone could live like this.

She longed to get inside where the heat was less suffocating, but she paused on the doorstep of Finnick and Annie's—no, just Finnick's—house.

Inside, it was silent. There were no signs of the baby, who had often been heard in the background whenever Finnick called her. It would have been easy to believe that no one was home at all, yet Katniss knew Finnick must be inside. She had a sneaking suspicion that he'd hardly left since everything had happened.

Steeling herself, she knocked. The door opened far sooner than she had expected, with Finnick on the other side. There was a smile across his face, but there was a soulless look in his eyes that made it impossible for Katniss to smile back. This was more like Capitol Finnick than Katniss had seen since the Quarter Quell. She wondered again why she had come when she could do nothing to help him.

"Katniss," he greeted, the relief in his voice, at least, more genuine than his expression. "I'm glad you're here."

Katniss followed him inside without speaking. She felt as if here mouth might betray her if she tried.

The house was in a greater state of disarray than Katniss remembered. She vaguely remembered being told that Dominic was walking now, and evidence of it was all over the place. Toys lay scattered across the ground where they'd been dropped and promptly forgotten.

Finnick led her into the living room where Dominic was sitting on a blanket, a smattering of toys all around him.

He wasn't crying, which was more than Katniss had expected after what she'd heard of him the past several months.

The kid looked fine, perfectly healthy, and Katniss hated that she exhaled in relief. Part of her had thought that she might find things in a worse state of disarray, with Finnick wholly incapable of keeping going without Annie there to help him.

But Finnick had survived under the Capitol's hand far longer than Katniss had and, one could argue, with greater success. Of course he was managing to hold himself together.

Somewhat.

Katniss watched him as he sat down. His jerky movements reminded her of the Finnick she'd known in District 13 when Annie had still been imprisoned by the Capitol, the Finnick who had been haunted by uncertainty and fear.

He didn't look at Katniss as they sat in silence. His gaze was intent on his son as if the boy would disappear the second he looked away.

Katniss took a deep breath, running her hands along her jeans. She had come, but she had no idea what to do next. Usually, she was perfectly fine with silence, but currently, it felt stifling.

"Would you like to hold him?"

Katniss blinked dumbly at Finnick as she processed the question. It took her longer than it should have to realize that he was talking about Dominic. She looked between Finnick and the toddler who had hardly acknowledged her presence.

Did she want to hold him? No, but Finnick was looking at her like he needed her to say yes, so she did.

She was stiff as Finnick lowered the child into her arms. Dominic came without fussing, his large green eyes staring up at her as if he were trying to ascertain if she were finally his mother returning. As soon as he had confirmed that she wasn't, he went back to playing with the small mermaid toy in his hand, oblivious to the fact that Katniss had no idea what she was doing with him.

Finnick didn't seem to notice her inexperience either. He had sat back down and leaned into the couch with his eyes closed. Katniss wondered if he had gotten a break from caring for Dominic since Annie had died.

She tightened her arms around Dominic, suddenly worried that he would topple off her lap and only make things worse for his father.

"I'm glad you came," Finnick said quietly, his eyes still closed and his head tilted back.

Katniss watched his chest rising and falling. It slowed even as she watched, and she realized belatedly that he was falling asleep.

"Me too," she whispered quietly to herself once he had already lost consciousness.

It surprised even her how much she meant the words.

The days would pass without anyone asking Katniss when she would return to District 12. Eventually, they would realize that she never would.


End file.
